Support Beams
by Orcrist's Mate
Summary: They fit well together, this strange and otherworldly pair who walk the streets of Ikebukuro with a quiet confidence, laughing at their own misfortunes. Shizuo and Celty's friendship in one hundred sentences.


**Title**: Support Beams**  
****Summary**: They fit well together, this strange and otherworldly pair who walk the streets of Ikebukuro with a quiet confidence, laughing at their own misfortunes. Shizuo and Celty's friendship in one hundred sentences.  
**Disclaimer**: I am merely leeching off Durarara's amazing world. Not mine, though I wish otherwise.  
**Warnings: **Swearing, occasional violence.

**Author's Note**: I've fully given in to my DRRR obsession at this point. Crossing my fingers so hard for a second season. Anyways, I've always thought that Shizuo and Celty had the most epic bromance ever going on. I don't ship them together, but their friendship has always stuck me as both interesting and incredibly adorable. I mean, both of them are quite prickly and can count the people they really care about on one hand, and yet they have a very strong bond.  
Oh, and I know you're meant to say what theme set you used, but I saved a bunch of them onto my computer months ago and can't for the life of me remember where I got them from, sorry! Hope you enjoy :)

* * *

**Support Beams**

**one. tower**

It's really not fair, he thinks as her slender fingers fly across the keyboard, that no matter what you do, some people always manage to break down the walls you put up.

**two. eternal **

Watching him grow from a sullen wreck of a teenager to a wild, self-destructive adult isn't as painful as she thought it would be – but time is always stealthily sliding by, and she fears to one day see lines of the years gone by begin to crease his face while she herself remains unchanging.

**three. subtle **

[You could try and talk it out with Izaya before doing anything else,] Celty suggests during the early years before they know each other well, and winces when a few minutes later the majority of Raira Academy is flattened to rubble.

**four. cheat**

"This is _not funny_, and I'm never playing poker with you again, you cheating, headless, expressionless piece of – stop laughing!"

**five. transparent **

Shizuo is easy to read – as the years pass Celty learns all the various twitches that accompany his sudden explosions of temper, and marvels at the stupidity of those who cannot see the signs.

**six. believable**

They fit well together, this strange and otherworldly pair who walk the streets of Ikebukuro with a quiet confidence, laughing at their own misfortunes.

**seven. repeat **

The day her PDA malfunctions is one of the most frustrating of her life, since Shizuo can't read her spidery cursive and she's forced to write it all out again in unbearable slowness.

**eight. addicted **

"Eh? Izaya's the one who makes _my _life a living hell by hanging around here, Celty... I don't go looking for him."

**nine. write **

Shizuo eventually comes to associate the tapping of a keyboard with an odd brand of serenity, and works hard not to smile whenever he hears it.

**ten. soulful **

He's too proud to ask her to stay an hour longer, but she does anyways and does not tell him how much his eyes betray.

**eleven. broken **

"You look like shit," Shizuo tells her bluntly after another fruitless night searching for her head.

**twelve. run **

One of the few times she sees him laugh in public is when they race each other down a subway track and emerge bursting into the central street, giddy on danger and adrenaline and their own particular brand of lunacy.

**thirteen. deja vu**

"Lost another job," he mumbles in explanation from his sprawled position on the floor, and Celty feels like they've been here a hundred times before.

**fourteen. alcohol **

[Up you get,] Celty sighs at him and slides an arm under his limp body, wishing her senses aren't quite so acute as the reek of vodka and vomit assaults her.

**fifteen. pauses **

One of the things she likes best about him is that he doesn't try to accommodate her disability or make her feel like he pities her – he routinely tells her to hurry up and type faster.

**sixteen. affront **

Shizuo never apologizes for anything, but when he throws a man who calls her a monster halfway down the street, she knows he's sorry for their argument.

**seventeen. experience **

After a while Celty gives up trying to give him advice about Izaya – Shizuo likes to make his own mistakes.

**eighteen. fatality**

[You're going to die before you're twenty-five if you keep this up,] she tells him grimly when the world blurs back into shape around him.

**nineteen. helping hand **

Shizuo likes the feel of Celty's hand over his own as she pulls him off the ground – it's strong and unpretending, just like her.

**twenty. breeze**

The sunset in Ikebukuro is glorious against the backdrop of silhouetted buildings, and the wind clutches at their clothes as they watch it together in satisfied silence.

**twenty-one. get up **

She is more than thankful when she finally meets Tom and realizes that other people are capable of understanding Shizuo too.

**twenty-two. villain **

"You have to admit, Celty, you _do _look kind of evil in that suit."

**twenty-three. worst day **

[This needs to stop,] she admonishes as she finds him down an alleyway, ragged, hungover and unshaven, using the exact same words he gave to her the year before when he found her brokenly wandering the streets at four in the morning, lost in the deceptive, magnetic call of her head.

**twenty-four. bewitching **

No one is ever sure where exactly they're looking, since he wears sunglasses constantly and she never takes her helmet off, so walking through the park when they are there is more than a little unnerving.

**twenty-five. jubilant **

"So, I see you finally gave in to Shinra," he says, giving a small smile as her fingers fly across the keys with boundless energy.

**twenty-six. languid **

They would never let each other know, but they both think of the other as catlike – Shizuo admires the easy, ethereal grace of her movements, while Celty sees in him a feral intensity often masked by a typical feline pretense of boredom.

**twenty-seven. obsessive**

The third time Shizuo marches off to find Izaya in the same day, Celty throws up her hands and goes home in disgust.

**twenty-eight. recoil **

There are the occasional whispers of 'freaks' or 'monsters' when they walk in the park together, but the labels so much easier to ignore when they're together.

**twenty-nine. vehement **

[Shizuo, calm down... all that cop did was shake me up a little,] she says, trying to break the steady chorus of 'kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill' streaming from his mouth.

**thirty. collide**

The one time they agree to spar with each other out of curiosity, an entire building gets destroyed and they both end up with apple-sized bruises patchworking across their skin.

**thirty-one. on my mind**

Their connection starts on the very first day they meet at Shinra's urging – Shizuo goes home and lies still on his bed for a long time, unable to shake the image of another outsider like him, while Celty searches for her head the entire night, knowing that he feels just as lost as she does.

**thirty-two. mirror **

Celty laughs when she first sees the bartender outfit, but quickly sobers when Shizuo's face closes down and she realizes the significance of the clothes for him.

**thirty-three. steady**

As Anri's arms clench tighter around her waist, Celty curses herself for her softness – but there was no way she could leave the girl to fend for herself, with a power like that and a self-disgust far too similar to Shizuo's lurking beneath her glasses.

**thirty-four. locked **

"Not for long," Shizuo says, and promptly kicks the door to her apartment down, much to Shinra's dismay.

**thirty-five. tight **

Okay, so maybe he had some dreams about her when he was a horny teenager – could you really blame him when she wore an outfit like that?

**thirty-six. punch **

"You hit like a girl," he says one time and ends up face down in the gutter, an imprint of Celty's boot on the back of his head.

**thirty-seven. urban**

He can't understand why she speaks of the Irish countryside so nostalgically – the idea of such a desolate place, when he already feels so alone amid a city of millions, unsettles him.

**thirty-eight. health**

Between the cigarettes and the constant destruction of his body, she's amazed he's still going strong... and is quietly terrified that the day when he won't pick himself off the ground is drawing ever closer.

**thirty-nine. older **

"I guess we're the same, you know, physical age now," Shizuo says, and she turns away sadly.

**forty. vital**

She can predict down to the exact second when he'll take out a cigarette and still thinks they're some of the most vile things created, but has grown to take comfort in the sound of his heavy breathing and the smoke drifting past her helmet – reminders that he's still real and with her.

**forty-one. dawn **

She can't bear happy people like Shinra early in the morning, and usually slips away to find more sullen, understandable company.

**forty-two. lust**

Because she values him as a friend, Celty never points out how hypocritical the contrast between his pacifist views and his blood-lust on the street really is.

**forty-three. memorial**

She collects any magazines featuring Kasuka that she finds, and leaves them outside his door – the few times she goes to his apartment, she sees them neatly stacked in the corner, well thumbed and free of dust.

**forty-four. pretend **

"For fuck's sake, Celty, just tell me what's wrong already – I know you too well to believe _that_ excuse."

**forty-five. zeal**

As Shizuo leads her on a crusade through Ikebukuro in search of his particular brand of milk, Celty reflects that she's never seen him this excited about anything, ever.

**forty-six. disaster **

"Just... don't say anything," he says to her before passing out in the wake of his rampage, and he sounds infinitely, unbelievably tired of everything.

**forty-seven. blush **

"Your head smokes more when we talk about Shinra, did you know that?"

**forty-eight. nimble**

In the early stages of their friendship she tries to teach him how to better protect himself in a battle with rolls and blocks, but he quickly loses patience and ends up fighting as he always has – in a whirling dance of chaos that is interestingly graceful in its own right.

**forty-nine. remain **

"He's afraid of leaving 'bukuro – I would be too, if I knew that I wouldn't be able to get away with losing control anywhere else," Shinra remarks after Celty tells him, wounded, about Shizuo's flat refusal to even consider visiting her homeland.

**fifty. snore **

Occasionally he stays in the apartment she and Shinra shares if he's been particularly injured, and the sound literally shakes the room.

**fifty-one. done**

Shizuo doesn't want to let her know and wouldn't be able to express himself even if he did, but every time she stays to help him instead of walking away like everyone else, he comes to view her more and more as the sister he never had... and, until he met her, never wanted.

**fifty-two. justice**

To this day Celty in unsure how Shizuo has managed to avoid prison, and he merely laughs when she asks.

**fifty-three. weapon**

He's the only person she's ever met who is completely unafraid of her scythe, which only reinforces her fear that someday soon he might just choose death over everything else.

**fifty-four. tide**

There's too much blood – no one could lose that much blood and live, Celty thinks dully as she hauls his body back to Shinra's, the image of an entire street awash in red painted onto her mind.

**fifty-five. accent **

"So, do you think you have a proper Irish accent when your head talks?"

**fifty-six. indirect**

She doesn't really get the appeal of Kasuka's high-budget, flashy movies, but it's the only time Shizuo will still for over an hour, so she suggests going to one whenever he looks particularly angry.

**fifty-seven. haze **

The smoke from her neck and his cigarettes often mingle, causing the world around them to look hazy and indistinct compared to the sharp definition of their bodies.

**fifty-eight. puzzle **

Celty actually falls off her motorcycle in shock when one day Shizuo abruptly opens his mouth and sings quietly – not a Japanese song, but an Irish ballad he learned specifically for her birthday (his voice is rough and English atrocious and Izaya somehow overhears and mocks him about it for months afterwards, but she grasps his hand for a moment in thanks, wondering what other parts of him she's never seen).

**fifty-nine. try again**

[Just keep digging, Shizuo,] she says coolly, suppressing laughter as she watches the teenager stutter over something constructive to say about her new helmet.

**sixty. reap **

"Karma's not real," he snarls at her after an innocent comment, and the park bench breaks under his grip. "What did I ever do to deserve _this_?"

**sixty-one. settle**

"Well, as long as he makes you happy, I guess there's no accounting for taste," Shizuo says and dodges a punch, grinning.

**sixty-two. treat **

Bike rides on special occasions rapidly became commonplace occurrences, but when she looks at his face, for once content against the breeze that rushes past their faces, she can't bring herself to kick him off.

**sixty-three. notice **

"I'm _fine_," Shizuo says rudely after she points out his limp, and tries to stomp away, but collapses as the fracture in his leg finally snaps.

**sixty-four. least **

[You're not nothing to me, so don't say that,] Celty types, and pulls him into a fierce hug that she knows he won't remember when he wakes up, hungover, in the morning.

**sixty-five. exception **

She can tell that he gets extremely aggravated when she talks to Izaya, and appreciates the effort he makes to rein in his emotions, however unsuccessful it is.

**sixty-six. rule**

[No more trying to hit Shinra no matter how annoying he can be, and that's final.]

**sixty-seven. correct**

Oddly, being around Shizuo is actually improving her social graces, since she quickly learns that not all thoughts should be voiced carelessly.

**sixty-eight. harm **

"You're not his mother, and you can't protect him from everything," Shinra eventually points out to her, bags under his eyes, as she screws up the picture of Shizuo's ruined bones and throws it across the room.

**sixty-nine. strive**

Shizuo tries to control himself on his own, he really does, but it becomes harder for him to do as he takes the easy way out and hangs around Celty, who he knows can talk him down.

**seventy. temperamental**

Celty's outbursts of temper can be almost as brutal as his own, Shizuo learns over the years as he accumulates an impressive collection of scars.

**seventy-one. divided **

Shinra takes an unnatural pleasure in putting Shizuo and Izaya in the same room, which irritates Celty – she loves the man, but she won't stand for her closest friend and whatever the hell Izaya is to her destroying each other over something that she will never understand.

**seventy-two. victory **

Shizuo is hopeless at shoji, until the day that he's not and beats her within the first few moves, shocking himself just as much as her (and she wonders, not for the first or last time, how much of his ignorance is a facade, how much is real, and how much is just there because he doesn't believe he can be better).

**seventy-three. delivery**

She keeps certain aspects of her job hidden from Shizuo... the less he knows about Izaya's involvement in Ikebukuro, the better for everyone.

**seventy-four. ballad**

He only sees her in a dress once – some sort of dance that Shinra drags her to – and privately thinks that she looks like a fairy-tale queen, or some ethereal specter from the stories she occasionally tells him from her homeland.

**seventy-five. all i ask **

[Please, just stop doing this to yourself,] she implores as he stares at the hospital ceiling, slowly breathing in the stale smell of disinfected air and shivering at the dusty kiss of the sheets on his shattered arms.

**seventy-six. fire **

Celty's not really sure why she likes him sometimes – he's crude, grumpy, apathetic and self-destructive, but there's a fire smoldering under the oppression of his eyes that speaks to something deep and visceral within her, something lost along with her memories and more vicious side.

**seventy-seven. lies**

"You know she thinks that you're a monster as well," Izaya taunts, then barely avoids his head getting torn off by a flying truck.

**seventy-eight. stormy **

They often share a pink umbrella when they're caught in the rain – Shizuo looks ridiculous holding it, but she suspects Kasuka gave to him and therefore makes no comment, especially since she likes the almost claustrophobic companionship it brings.

**seventy-nine. terrible**

Shizuo schools his face into impassiveness as the little girl runs away from him, but knows that Celty catches the small flicker of hurt across his mouth.

**eighty. decay**

It's a combination of Shizuo and Shinra that make her feel beautiful and wanted and alive – but neither of them will ever know it, and she awaits the day with a heavy heart when that warm glow will die away.

**eighty-one. dramatic **

[You're such a drama queen, Shizuo-]

"Funny, I was just going to say the exact same thing about you."

**eighty-two. panic **

She knows – she _knows_ – that he can take care of himself, but it doesn't stop the bone-deep alarm that sets in every time she sees him fight, because while Shizuo is the strongest in Ikebukuro, he's not the strongest in the world, and he's going to find that out someday.

**eighty-three. with you **

Shinra is not jealous by nature, which is good because although she would choose him over Shizuo if she absolutely had to, Celty wouldn't know what to do with herself during the hours when they would have sat side by side on a park bench, somehow safe from the rest of the world.

**eighty-four. killing**

It's only a matter of time before he actually kills someone by accident, and she jumps every time she hears police sirens near his house.

**eighty-five. jump **

"I've never seen someone quite that whipped before," Shizuo says, impressed, as Shinra scampers off to fulfill her request.

**eighty-six. waste**

[The world just isn't ready for someone like you... not your fault, but that's the way it is.]

**eighty-seven. passion **

[No one's perfect,] she says simply, waving the PDA in front of Shizuo's face as he crushes a lamp post, openly seething about one of Shinra's lies.

**eighty-eight. flying **

Shizuo clings onto her waist for dear life as they zoom through the streets of Ikebukuro, surroundings blurring into a smear of color that isolates them as the only solid objects in a city of chaos.

**eighty-nine. drought **

"I promised you I would quit, and I _did _quit for a while, and I haven't had more than one drink a week for months by now, so would you shut the fuck up about it already?"

**ninety. sword **

Celty thinks Shizuo is probably the only person who would stand a fighting chance against Saika and its host, but will try it herself first if things come to that point – he puts himself at death's door enough without her helping him along.

**ninety-one**. **skill**

[There's an art to it,] she says, exasperated, and plucks the scythe out of his hands to show him again.

**ninety-two**. **dust**

Shizuo looks like a ghost as he bursts into the collapsed building and drags her stunned body out, covered from head to foot in concrete dust.

**ninety-three. enchant **

The shadows that she weave for him last a long time – he still has the pair of gloves she gave him at home, where they lie next to the picture of Kasuka on his bedside table.

**ninety-four. powerless **

[You're not _listening _to me – hey, don't walk away!]

**ninety-five. shadows**

On the days when he hasn't seen her for a while, the pools of darkness between the street lamps always ripple, like she's going to come bursting out of them.

**ninety-six. fairy tale**

He supposes that the mere existence of Celty would prove some fantastic scientific things, but hopes that the rest of humanity doesn't discover her – sharing is not his forte.

**ninety-seven. drown**

It takes her aback to hear him say that if he had to go, he'd choose drowning – she's always imagined that he'll die in a blaze of light and blood, radiant as the setting sun, instead of quietly succumbing to the pressure of the world.

**ninety-eight. soul**

"Don't be stupid, of course you have one," Shizuo says with a scowl, eyebrows shooting up in surprise when she hunches over silently.

**ninety-nine. glow**

[I wish I could smile at you right now,] she confesses, and tilts her head as his face softens into something far gentler than normal.

**one hundred. mellow**

Even in his calmer, more introspective moments Shizuo does not examine any of his relationships closely, but it's not necessary with Celty – they both recognize each other's worth.


End file.
